The Deep South

Recently we spend a weekend in the Deep South. No, not Savannah or Charleston, but Lethbridge, in the Deep South of Alberta. At least we were able to see the Oldman River. (Oops, wrong link.)

Looking South toward Montana

  

Compared to Central Alberta, the South is an alien landscape, of badlands and hoodoos and coulees and high prairie. The inhabitants seem to be prepared to welcome aliens themselves.

Southern Alberta looks very different from the now familiar central part. To our eyes the fields looked less green; trees were fewer and farther between, except in the river valleys and coulees; and if the irrigation equipment in nearly every field is any indication, Southern Alberta is a much more arid place. Driving south, after passing Calgary, we could see the foothills and Rocky Mountains to the west and the flat prairie to the east.

Having landed in the south, we had a couple of days to explore. It was hot, around 33 degrees in the shade, if you could find any.

We paid a visit to Writing on Stone Provincial Park where we were able to hike among the hoodoos in the Milk River valley.

Milk River in Writing-on-Stone Park

The landscape was stunning, and the rock formations quite impressive.

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

Hoodoo

In addition to the natural landscape there were also some petroglyphs.

Lots of impressive scenes, and some lovely flowers to be seen on our hike.

All in all, we enjoyed Writing-on-Stone.

On Day 2 of our short stay we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

The interpretive centre is built unobtrusively into the side of the cliff beside the actual Buffalo Jump. There we learned how the local Blackfoot hunted buffalo (or bison) by driving them off the cliff. It must have taken great skill, co-operation and bravery to achieve a successful hunt. 

The Buffalo Jump

A couple of short trails on the site provide an opportunity to see some of the plants... 

...and to enjoy the views.

After Head-Smashed-In, we made a quick stop in Vulcan on our way home, where we managed to snap the photos at the top of the page.

It was a short visit leaving much unexplored, but a lovely weekend. We'll be back.

Shrines

Shrine at Edmonton General Hospital

Several years ago a friend of mine published a guidebook to Canadian shrines. It was quite comprehensive, including the big, well-known shrines like Ste Anne de Beaupré, and small road-side shrines that had been set up by who knows whom in devotion to the Mother of God or the Sacred Heart of Jesus or some saint or other.

But there's another kind of shrine that we're increasingly aware of in Western culture. I'm referring to the popular sort of shrine that usually appears spontaneously to mark either the location of a tragedy or devotion to someone famous who has died. Under the rubric of popular shrines I would include the candles and flowers and sympathy cards at Kensington Palace after Princess Diana died, or similar displays after the Montreal Massacre, or when any public figure dies. It's interesting, in passing, that in our secular age so many people seem to discover quickly where to find the votive candles that are so often part of these popular shrines.

Then there are the smaller version of popular shrines, the little clusters of bouquets, or perhaps a small wooden cross, which mark the spot of a road accident. These are definitely visible along the highways in Alberta as they are anywhere in North America. Driving on the highway I can't help but wonder about whether certain locations are particularly dangerous, given the presence of several memorials.

Edmonton also has what I like to call municipal shrines. These are locations marked by city road signs as places where someone has died in a traffic accident. In the case of the one shown here, it was mixed with a popular shrine, as someone had carefully taped a photo of the deceased and some plastic flowers to the pole beneath the municipal sign.

I guess the message of these municipal shrines is not so much to honour the accident victim as to remind drivers that they bear responsibility for the life and safety of pedestrians, and that taking that responsibility too lightly results in someone's fatality.

Be careful out there. And, oh yes, may the victims of traffic accidents rest in peace.

The Longest Day

Today is the day of the Summer Solstice, the day the sun stops (which is what “solstice” means) in its trek northward, and turns south again. It's the first day of summer and the longest day from dawn to dusk in the Northern Hemisphere. Here in the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over a million, it has been a fine and sunny day, indeed, in spite of earlier predictions of rain.

A few months ago I was marvelling at the shortness of the day. I noted that the sun rises much later in Edmonton than in Montreal in winter, although it sets at about the same time.

In summer, the dynamic is the opposite. Now the sun rises at about the same time as in Montreal, but it sets much later. Daylight savings at work. According to Environment Canada, sunrise this morning was at 5:04 in Edmonton (I'll take their word for it) and sunset will be at 22:07. That's 17:03 of daylight. In contrast, in Montreal the sun rose at 5:06 and sets at 20:47 for 15:41 of daylight. Somehow having an extra hour and 20 minutes of daylight on a June evening more than compensates for having an hour and a quarter less on a January morning.

Needing my sunglasses to drive at 21:30 will take some getting used to, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

Extreme Gas Prices

Gas prices finally came down a bit on the weekend.

In Montreal there are two common extreme sports that just about everyone practices. One is jaywalking. The other is buying gas. It's an art to buy gas at just the right price in Montreal because the fluctuations in prices are huge. The trick is to time the empty tank with the bottom of the gyrations in price. If you miss it by an hour, you're out of luck because the price has shot up 10 cents or more per litre.

A graph (thanks to GasBuddy.com) of gas prices in Montreal over the last month demonstrates the volatility of prices.

But in Edmonton prices tend to be much more stable. The price drop on the weekend was the first change in about 3 weeks or so. Here's a graph of Edmonton prices over the last month.

The only trouble with price stability is that people were getting pretty tired of paying such high prices and were ready for the correction when it came. And then a 4 cent drop was so welcome, no-one really complains much about the fact that gas prices are still pretty lofty. At least by Edmonton standards.

Here's a graph with both Montreal and Edmonton on it for the last month.

So if it's excitement one is after, extreme gas buying isn't an option in Edmonton.

And almost no-one jaywalks.

Sausage and Eggs

I enjoy sausage and eggs for breakfast from time to time. I ate one of the most memorable such breakfasts at a home where I was staying in Newfoundland over 20 years ago. The sausage on that occasion turned out to be made from moose. Delicious.

But in Alberta sausage and eggs are not only a good choice for breakfast. They also make for monuments.

Today I visited Vegreville to take a service at the local church. It was a nice group of people, and an enjoyable service. After the service there was a lovely coffee hour with loads of food and loads of discussion about tomorrow's provincial election. Then it was time to play tourist a bit on the way home. It was a perfect day for it – warm and sunny.

First stop was Vegreville's famous pysanka, or Ukrainian Easter Egg. Constructed of aluminium in the mid-1970s, the pysanka is enormous. It weighs some 2.5 tonnes and is mounted in such a way that it can turn in the wind, like a giant Easter weathervane. The pysanka was built to honour both the Ukrainian heritage of many of the area's residents and the centenary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's still billed as the world's largest pysanka.

Very impressive!

Then, on the way home, it was from the sublime to the, er, ... not quite so sublime. We stopped in at Mundare to see their giant kubasa, constructed in honour of the local sausage maker. “Kubasa,” I discovered, is a Canadian English word, evidently a corruption of the Ukranian “kovbasa”, which is a cognate of the Polish “kielbasa,” which means sausage. The origin of the term seems to be a Turkic language. Kubasa is pretty commonly eaten in Alberta, either on a hot-dog bun, as a “kubie”, or on a hamburger bun (a kubie burger) or in slices on a tray of snacks. In fact, there was some kubasa and cheese as part of the coffee hour this morning.

Another lesson in Alberta's geography and culture.

Road trip!

Last week a few of us from the office took a road trip. The occasion was a sad one, the deconsecration of a church that we were selling. For the local people who gathered for this event it was the death of dreams, and a time for them to remember with sadness all the memories of what had happened in that church building over the years: memories of weddings, of baptisms, of funerals; memories of regular worship and of grander occasions like Christmas. And as the Bishop led us in prayers of thanksgiving for all the ministry that had been associated with that place, and read the certificate of deconsecration, it felt a bit like a funeral.

The trip itself was quite eventful. The Treasurer and I started out first thing in the morning in a rented car for a three-hour journey. The roads were rather nasty, as we had had a snowstorm the day before – the first in several weeks. After a slippery start, conditions eventually improved and we made our way to our destination, where we met up with the Bishop and her Assistant. Then, after taking care of a few details at the church, and deconsecrating it, we stopped for a quick lunch and started out for home.

That's when things got interesting. 

The Treasurer pointed out that we were only a short detour away from a local monument, so off to Glendon, the home of the Big Pyrogy! It wasn't hard to find. Just in case you couldn't see the huge Pyrogy held aloft on a fork in Pyrogy Park (at the corner of Pyrogy Drive and 1st Ave), there was a sign pointing the way. Across the street was Pyrogy Park Cafe, with a sign offering All-day Breakfast, Western & Chinese Cuisine, Vietnamese Dishes and (of course) Pyrogies!

Shouldn't have eaten that hamburger!

Election Fever

Alberta is in the middle of an election campaign. Near as I can tell the question is whether Albertans will give the Progressive Conservative Party a majority or an overwhelming majority. Or perhaps vote Wildrose and shift the province to the right, ending a 41-year PC dynasty.

But I have to sit this one out. For the first time in my adult life, I find myself unable to vote. Not because I can't decide which candidate to support. It's because the Alberta Elections Act defines an elector in section 1(1)(j) as "a Canadian citizen, [who] is 18 years of age or older and is, and has been for at least the immediately preceding 6 months, ordinarily resident in Alberta." (emphasis added) Since we just moved here three months ago, that last bit means that we don't meet the residency requirement. So we find ourselves disenfranchised.

Alberta will pay for me to receive medical care. Alberta will certify my fitness to operate a motor-vehicle, and license said vehicle to be driven on public roads. Alberta will even happily collect taxes from me, retroactive to January 2011. But let me vote? Nope. :-(

And, lest this seem like Alberta-bashing, because it really isn't intended to be, let me point out that the same is true in almost all of the rest of the country. With the exceptions of Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, it seems, every other province in Canada requires 6 months' residency before you can vote in a provincial election. It's just the luck of the draw that the writ was dropped before we were here for six months. And I imagine we're far from the only Canadians living in Alberta who can't vote in this election.

Maybe once the dust has settled, and we know which leader's campaign bus has taken her to victory, the legislature should revisit that six-month waiting period for voting. And not just the Alberta legislature, but the legislatures of all the other provinces that still deny the vote to newcomers.